CERAMICS - ABOUT + EXHIBITIONS
About Ceramics
2024
My first creative passion was photography, I now approach Ceramics in much the same way that I make photographs, What I’m looking for is when imagery, ideas and forms come together in a moment of clarity that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
I became involved with ceramics through learning how to print ceramic decal transfers, Initially I applied them to Victorian ceramics. My ideas were concerned with NIMBY-ism and on a deeper level with how contemporary economies disconnect people from each other, the environment, and the ability to make and transform their worlds. I started to express these ideas through applying transfers to domestic ware, Incorporating imagery of pylons and industrial signage to collide with the traditional bucolic landscapes and floral decoration found on vintage ceramics
Seeing potential in making ceramics with printed elements, I started to make plaster moulds from bottles, slip casting pieces in earthenware clay. Now I create original forms influenced by contemporary packaging that work with and add to the impact of the diverse imagery that I use in my transfers. My practice, While still concerned with the impacts of globalisation on our fractured world, is now primarily driven by a desire to push creative and technical boundaries, My philosophy is to always go for the most interesting and exciting way of developing a piece or approach, allowing serendipity and chance to play a role, Surprise and discovery have become my companions as I venture into the vast field that is ceramics
In My Backyard, MA Multi Disciplinary Print exhibition
May 2012
View of the exhibition installation which combined ceramics, furniture with bespoke laser cut marquetry, large sale photographic prints and a book
Exhibition statement
These ceramics stem from my interest in landscape and the environment, I went to places I could reach using pedal power from where I live in Bristol, ending up photographing industrial areas and landscapes along the river Seven. As I did this I became interested in the idea of NIMBY-ism, that the industrial landscapes and infrastructure that I found were fine as long as they were 'Not In My Back Yard'. I used the images that I had taken on these rides to make ceramic transfers, these have been fired onto the surfaces of original Victorian pieces, modern plain commercial porcelain and most recently slip cast porcelain bottles and cups. The forms for the slip cast pieces come from commercially produced bottles. In these pieces the industrial and the domestic collide, I hope that they reflect upon the provenance of objects and the conflicted relationship between creativity and mass production.
Second Impressions, New Brewery Arts, Cirencester
January - May 2014
Images from the Second Impressions group exhibition at New Brewery Arts
